'I am sure you ought to know.'

'Then why did you encourage her?'

'I pitied her--I believed her--I never thought she would have led me into this!'

'How did she lead you?'

'Always talking about her precious, persecuted uncle. I believe she was in league with him all the time!'

'That is nonsense,' said Lady Merrifield, 'as you must see if you reflect a little. Dolores was too young to have been told this man's real character; she only knew that her mother, who had spent her childhood with him, treated him as a brother, and did all she could for him. Dolores did very wrongly and foolishly in keeping up a connection with him unknown to me; but I cannot help feeling there was great excuse for her, and she was quite as much deceived as you were.'

'Oh, of course, you stand by your own niece, Lady Merrifield. If you knew what horrid things she said about your pride and unkindness, as she called it, you would not think she deserved it.'

'Nay, that is exactly what does most excuse her in my eyes. Her fancying such things of me was what did prevent her from confiding in me.'

Constance had believed herself romantic, but the Christian chivalry of Lady Merrifield's nature was something quite beyond her. She muttered something about Dolores not deserving, which made her visitor really angry, and say, 'We had better not talk of deserts. Dolores is a mere child--a mother-less child, who had been a good deal left to herself for many months. I let her come to you because she seemed shy and unhappy with us, and I did not like to deny her the one pleasure she seemed to care for. I knew what an excellent person and thorough lady your sister is, and I thought I could perfectly trust her with you. I little thought you would have encouraged her in concealment, and--I must say--deceit, and thus made me fail in the trust her father reposed in me.'

'I would never have done it,' Constance sobbed, 'but for what she said about you. Lady Merrifield!'

'Well, and even if I am such a hard, severe person, does that make it honourable or right to help the child I trusted to you to carry on this underhand correspondence?'

Constance hung her head. Her sister had said the same to her, but she still felt herself the most injured party, and thought it very hard that she should be so severely blamed for what the girls at her school treated so lightly. She said, 'I am very sorry. Lady Merrifield,' but it was not exactly the tone of repentance, and it ended with: 'If it had not been for her, I should never have done it.'

'I suppose not, for there would have been no temptation. I was in hopes that you would have shown some kindlier and more generous feeling towards the younger girl, who could not have gone so far wrong without your a.s.sistance, and who feels your treatment of her very bitterly. But to find you incapable of understanding what you have done, makes me all the more glad that the friendship--if friendship it can be called--is broken off between you. Good-bye. I think when you are older and wiser, you will be very sorry to recollect the doings of the last few months.'

Lady Merrifield walked away, and found on her return that Dolores had succeeded in writing to her father, and was so utterly tired out by the feelings it had cost her that she was only fit to lie on the sofa and sleep.

Gillian was, of course, not seen till she came home from evening service.

'Oh, mamma,' she said, 'what did you do to Constance?'

'Why?'

'Well, I heard you shut the front door. And presently after there came such a noise through the wall that all the girls p.r.i.c.ked up their ears, and Miss Hacket jumped up in a fright. If it had been Val, one would have called it a naughty child roaring.'

'What! did I send her into hysterics?'

'I suppose, as she is grown up, it must have the fine name, but it wasn't a bit like poor Dolly's choking. I am sure she did it to make her sister come! Well, of course, Miss Hacket went away, and I did the best I could, but what could one do with all these screeches and bellowings breaking out?'

'For shame. Gill!'

'I can't help it, mamma. If you had only seen their faces when the uproar came in a fresh gust! How they whispered, and some looked awestruck. I thought I had better get rid of them, and come home myself; but Miss Hacket met me, and implored me to stay, and I was weak-minded enough to do so. I wish I hadn't, for it was only to be provoked past bearing. That horrid girl has poisoned even Miss Hacket's mind, and she thinks you have been hard on her darling. You did not know how nervous and timid dear Connie is!'

'Well, Gill, I confess she made me very angry, and I told her what I thought of her.'

'And that she didn't choose to hear!'

'Did you see her again?'

'No, I am thankful to say, I did not. But Miss Hacket would go on all tea-time, explaining and explaining for me to tell you how dear Connie is so affectionate and so easily led, and how Dolores came over her with persuasions, and deceived her. I declare I never liked Dolly so well before. At any rate, she doesn't make professions, and not a bit more fuss than she can help. And there was Miss Hacket getting brandy cherries and strong coffee, and I don't know what all, because dear Connie was so overcome, and dear Lady Merrifield was quite under a mistake, and so deceived by Dolores. I told Miss Hacket you were never under a mistake nor deceived.'

'You didn't, Gillian!'

'Yes, I did, and the stupid woman only wanted to kiss me (but I wouldn't let her) and said I was very right to stand up for my dear mamma. As if that had anything to do with it! What are you laughing at, mamma? Why, Uncle Regie is laughing, and Cousin Rotherwood! What is it?'

'At the two partisans who never stand up for their own families,' said Uncle Regie.

'But it's true!' cried Gillian.

'What! that I am never mistaken nor deceived?' said Lady Merrifield.

'Except when you took Miss Constance for a sensible woman, eh?' said her brother.

'That I never did! But I did take her for a moderately honourable one.'

'Well, that was a mistake,' owned Gillian. 'And Miss Hacket is as bad!

There's no grat.i.tude---'

'Hush!' broke in her mother; and Gillian stopped abashed, while Lady Merrifield continued, 'I won't have Miss Hacket abused. She is only blinded by sisterly affection.'

'I don't think I can go there again,' said Gillian, 'after what she said about you.'

'Nonsense!' said her mother. 'Don't be as bad as Constance in trying to make me angry by telling me all poor Dolly's grumblings.'

'Follow your mother's example, Gillian,' said Lord Rotherwood, 'and, if possible, never hear, certainly never attend to, what any one says of you behind your back.'

'Is said to have said of you, you should add, Rotherwood,' put in the colonel. 'It is a decree worse than eavesdropping.'

'Oh, Regie!' exclaimed his sister.

'Well, not perhaps for your own honour and conscience, but the keyhole is a more trustworthy medium than the reporter.'

'That's a strong way of stating it, but, at any rate, the keyhole has no temper nor imagination, or prejudice of its own,' said Lady Merrifield.

'No, and as far as it goes, it enables you to judge of the frame in which the words, even if correctly reported, were spoken,' added Colonel Mohun.

'The moral of which is,' said Lord Rotherwood, drolly, 'that Gillian is not to take notice of anyone's observations upon her unless she has heard them through the keyhole.'

'And so one would never hear them at all.'

'Q. E. D.,' said Lord Rotherwood. 'And now, Lily, do you. ever sing the two evening-hymns. Ken and Keble, now, as the family used to do on Sundays at the Old Court, long ere the days of 'Hymns Ancient and Modern'?

'Don't we?' said Lady Merrifield. 'Only all our best voices will be singing it at Rawul Pindee!'

And, as she struck a note on the piano, all the younger people still up, Mysie, Phyllis, Wilfred and Valetta, gathered round from the outer room to join in their evening Sunday delight. Fly put her hand into her father's and whispered, 'You told me about it, daddy.' He began to sing, but his voice thickened as he missed the tones once a.s.sociated with it.

And Lady Merrifield, too, nearly broke down as with all her heart she sang, hopefully,